or the example of their virtues. He relieved the distress, and
restored the beauty, of the cities of Epirus and Peloponnesus. [78]
Athens acknowledged him for her benefactor; Argos, for her deliverer.
The pride of Corinth, again rising from her ruins with the honors of
a Roman colony, exacted a tribute from the adjacent republics, for the
purpose of defraying the games of the Isthmus, which were celebrated
in the amphitheatre with the hunting of bears and panthers. From this
tribute the cities of Elis, of Delphi, and of Argos, which had inherited
from their remote ancestors the sacred office of perpetuating the
Olympic, the Pythian, and the Nemean games, claimed a just exemption.
The immunity of Elis and Delphi was respected by the Corinthians; but
the poverty of Argos tempted the insolence of oppression; and the feeble
complaints of its deputies were silenced by the decree of a provincial
magistrate, who seems to have consulted only the interest of the capital
in which he resided. Seven years after this sentence, Julian [79]
allowed the cause to be referred to a superior tribunal; and his
eloquence was interposed, most probably with success, in the defence of
a city, which had been the royal seat of Agamemnon, [80] and had given
to Macedonia a race of kings and conquerors. [81]

[Footnote 70: According to some, says Aristotle, (as he is quoted by
Julian ad Themist. p. 261,) the form of absolute government is contrary
to nature. Both the prince and the philosopher choose, how ever to
involve this eternal truth in artful and labored obscurity.]

[Footnote 71: That sentiment is expressed almost in the words of Julian
himself. Ammian. xxii. 10.]

[Footnote 72: Libanius, (Orat. Parent. c. 95, p. 320,) who mentions the
wish and design of Julian, insinuates, in mysterious language that the
emperor was restrained by some particular revelation.]

[Footnote 73: Julian in Misopogon, p. 343. As he never abolished, by any
public law, the proud appellations of Despot, or Dominus, they are
still extant on his medals, (Ducange, Fam. Byzantin. p. 38, 39;) and the
private displeasure which he affected to express, only gave a different
tone to the servility of the court. The Abbe de la Bleterie (Hist. de
Jovien, tom. ii. p. 99-102) has curiously traced the origin and progress
of the word Dominus under the Imperial government.]

[Footnote 74: Ammian. xxii. 7. The consul Mamertinus (in Panegyr. Vet.
xi. 28, 29, 30) celebrates the ausp